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Financial Regulator Hires Diversity Monitor

By Ben Protess April 30, 2012 12:22 pmApril 30, 2012 12:22 pm

The nation’s consumer financial watchdog has set out to address another Wall Street problem: a lack of diversity.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the new federal agency policing the financial industry, announced on Monday that it had hired a director for its Office of Minority and Women Inclusion. The unit will focus on promoting diversity at the bureau, its private contractors and the financial firms it oversees.

“Mr. Ishimaru’s extensive experience in promoting diversity makes him the perfect person for the job,” Richard Cordray, director of the bureau, said in a statement.

The agency’s diversity office, mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act, the same law that created the bureau itself, opened its doors January. It followed the creation of similar offices at many other regulatory agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The author of the requirement, Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, said that the offices would help address the male-dominated world of Wall Street.

The agency’s office is tasked with setting hiring standards for the bureau, an effort to build a diverse work force for the agency’s rank-and-file and upper management. Under Dodd-Frank, the office must also assess “the diversity policies and practices” of the firm’s that face regulation from the bureau. The bureau oversees a mix of Wall Street’s biggest banks and more obscure financial players like payday lenders and mortgage firms.

Mr. Ishimaru was a commissioner at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and was temporarily its acting director. He also held senior positions in the Justice Department’s civil rights division and at the United States Commission on Civil Rights.

“I am thrilled at this opportunity to be a part of a new era of consumer financial protection,” Mr. Ishimaru said in the statement.